Of Shadows and Subjective Truth
by BlossomCricket
Summary: Your father sits with you and he understands, because he's also the type to do anything for the woman he loves and it's not your fault - your father says - that the girl with the dirty clothes had asked you to destroy rather than create.


You feel small, standing in such a crowded courtyard, and you're pretty sure that it's never been this densely populated in Zaofu before. But an ambassador of some sort with a train came in about an hour ago asking your mother if they've any room for some refugees, _just for a little while,_ and now there's barely enough room to walk around. But at least they're not rude, you suppose, and they seem to be clean. Well, _she's_ not, and maybe that's why you can't take your eyes off her. Dirty green clothes hang loosely from her muck-covered, almost skeletal body. You ask your mother why she's so muddy and your father clasps a soft, but firm hand over your mouth. "Junior," he says, with perhaps a bit more reproach than is really necessary, "that's not polite."

She's looking at you, eyes wide and curious. You feel strange, as though on display, and that's not right - surely that's not right? - because this is _your_ home, not hers, and what's she even doing here on your mother's lap being cuddled like she's one of the babies when you're 'too big for that now, son'?

"Who's he?" she asks, and you're confused. People know who you are. But people don't know who she is, who any of these new citizens are and that's what all this hullabaloo is supposed to be about.

"This is my son," your mother says anyway, bending some sand out of the girl's tangled hair. "He's about your age, I should think, maybe a little older. How old are you, sweetheart?"

Sweetheart, that's a new one. Wait, no it's not, that's what she calls Opal. _Great,_ you think, pushing your glasses higher up on your nose, _another gifted one_. That's going to be more time she won't be spending with you painting the model trains the two of you had started before the twins were even born. But at least you have your dad, except that maybe you don't because he's looking at her now too and he looks like he did when Grandma Yuan went to tea with the spirits and didn't come back. You shuffle on your feet uncomfortably, you've been on them _all day_ after all, and you don't even realise you're staring at her again until Opal toddles up behind you and wraps her arms around you for support.

"Where are the babies?" she asks, and her childish lisp still annoys you, but you're gentle with her, and you take her hand and lead her to where the twins are sleeping in side-by-side cribs. "I can hold them?" she asks, turning around and beaming up at you and you deflate, remembering a time when she'd talk about and to you with that same reverence in her voice. Still, she's your sister, and it's not her fault girls are programmed to find babies fascinating.

"Not yet," you say, and she pouts. A tiny, selfish part of you feels happy that she's a little less happy than she was two minutes ago. "We should wait for mom and dad, you're not big enough to hold them by yourself yet."

"But you can help!" Opal is stubborn, you know this, and you also know that whilst your little sister has the sweetest nature in the world she can cry for hours when upset. And your parents will be happy you tried to keep her occupied while they were busy, right?

"Well, okay then, but you have to sit down and keep still."

"Yes, yes I will, I'll sit really still!"

"Good, now which one do you want?" You can't even tell the difference. They both look the same to you, so you're really hoping she doesn't know which one's which either.

"Um. Wing! No, Wei. Both?" And you're tempted, you're very tempted but you can't hold both of them at the same time any more than she can and you're not even sure you won't get into trouble for picking up one of the twins without supervision.

"How about we just hold one for now, Opal, and then we'll hold the other when we're finished?"

"Okay then. But we really have to do both because otherwise the one we don't cuddle will get sad."

"Do you have a preference as to which one we hold first?" and you know you're imitating your father now, because that's what he'd say. You're not sure if it's silly, but either way it works because for the first time all day Opal makes a decision and sticks to it. You hand her Wing, and sit by her side, cross-legged on the dusty floor. Your right arm is around Opal's shoulders, supporting her back so she doesn't tip backwards, and your left is helping her cradle the baby's head. It's awkward, but she's happy so you choose to ignore the cramp that's threatening to come and bite you. Besides, Opal's singing some silly nursery rhyme. It's sweet, the fact that she's completely tone-deaf aside.

"I'm ready to put him back now." she says eventually, resting her own head against your shoulder and yawning. Perhaps it's not wise to let her hold the other one, you're still not sure whether you've been holding Wei or Wing for the past twenty minutes, whilst she's on the verge of taking a nap herself. You say as much to her and, to your surprise, she agrees. "Besides," she says, holding your hand as you walk with her to her bedroom, "if you think about it, I already held both of them."

"You did?"

"Yes! Like daddy says, when there's a Wing there's a Wei."

And suddenly you're laughing. Because your little sister has just told her first joke, and you were the only one to hear it. She's pouting now, because ' _what is so funny?'_ and you've not the heart to tell her that she's misheard an idiom so you make up a lie about how your clothes were tickling your arms and smile the rest of the way down the hall.

Had you looked back you'd have seen the girl with the dirty clothes staring at you, wondering what could be so funny and eventually coming to the conclusion that it must have been herself, so comically out of place in a city as beautiful as this.

…

"Huan gets to have projects, so why can't I?" It's not fair, you think, as you're subjected to yet another long-winded spiel from your father about how whilst art is good for the soul and morale of its residents, architecture and engineering is what builds the body of a city. You know there's some truth to what he's saying, but it still rubs you the wrong way that you never got a choice in which one you were allowed to represent.

"Now, shall we get started on the blueprints for the domes? Your mother wants them to be finished by winter, so we'd best get a move on."

You spend the next four hours going over plans meticulously with your father, who seems pleased with your progress but not confident enough in your suggestions to actually implement any of them into his designs. You're disappointed, but not surprised, and as you make your way down to the dining room for dinner you bump into the girl with the dirty clothes. Except her clothes are like yours now, clean and ironed, and her hair is now shiny and pulled black into two neat braids.

"Hi Baatar," she says, tongue catching on the T a little because her last top tooth finally fell out a few days ago and she's too busy, clearly, to waste time trying to find a new way to say your name properly. "Where were you today? You missed it! Wei and Wing were tossing discs of m-" and there she goes, prattling on about something the twins had done. It's tiresome and you need to get changed and obviously she doesn't care too much about where you've been if she's already over it and- Oh, wait, she's not talking anymore.

"Sorry, I must have zoned off, I wasn't ignoring you. Just a bit tired," you're rambling, and she's smiling, big and gap-toothed. "I was with my dad, we were doing building stuff?"

"Oh that sounds like fun, what were you working on?" she asks, and you balk, because she actually seems interested but you don't know what to say.

"I, uh, we were, _DOMES_!" the last part is shouted, the brilliance of your own mind catching up with you again and she laughs so hard you can't help but chuckle along too.

"So… domes?" she asks when you're both finished, but by then your mother has caught up to you both and it's time to get changed and ready for dinner.

You don't see her again for a few weeks, and when you do she seems too busy to talk about everything you'd spent ages remembering so you could explain it to her properly.

Had you bothered to strike up that conversation you'd have found out that she wasn't exactly clueless herself.

(the fact that she'd learned it just to impress you will be a secret she takes to her grave)

…

You heard her slip up and now you can't un-hear it.

"Ma-Suyin."

Had you asked her about it she'd have blushed bright red and punched you in the arm.

…

Where you once had an annoyance, and then an ally, you have an Opal-shaped hole in your life. Bookish children tend to stick together, after all, but now she's gone and you really need to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Because you two have talked about this. She'll write and you'll write and it'll be different but it won't be bad. Except that it will be, because who are you going to wink conspiratorially at over the table when the metalbenders of the family start going on about Power Disc or the latest art project or the like? Who is she going to talk to when she feels like she's being left behind and is lost and will never catch up?

Will she even feel like that anymore?

You hope not. Or, at least, you hope that one day you can hope not. Hope is a rare commodity these days, even in the illustrious, wealthy city you call home, but one thing you've never been taught to be is frugal.

The girl with the dirty clothes dances now, beautifully, and she's been doing so for a few years now but you've been too wrapped up in your own head to pay much attention. And, in your defence, she's been busy too. Though why you feel like you need to justify your own thoughts and actions to yourself you don't know.

It doesn't matter though, not really, not when you're sure you're dying and you can't take another step and she's there and she's laughing, _the nerve of her!_

"Baatar," she teases, and it's cocky, it's confident. "Come on now, one more lap and I'll let you rest for a whole ten minutes before we do stretches.

She's evil, you're fairly sure, and you curse her under what little breath you have as you start running - well, you try to - around the court again.

True to her word, she lets you rest. She helps you into stretches you're fairly sure the human body wasn't meant to be able to pull off and she even rubs away the cramp in your left leg without complaining that you're sweaty and gross. There's a kindness in her voice when she suggests weight training. From anyone else you'd have considered it an insult, but as she goes on about stamina and endurance and stress relief you start to think that maybe you've found - though not a replacement for your sister - a companion. In any case, she knows what it's like to feel alone in a room full of people, and that's more than enough of a foundation to build a friendship on.

Had you not done the extra lap she'd have laughed, though not with any real spite, and hosed you down with freezing water. You wouldn't have become as close as you did and she wouldn't have asked you to come with her on her mission to unite the Earth Kingdom.

…

Your first year on the road together is tough. You have a good few dozen soldiers - former guards of Zaofu - and enough supplies to last a couple of weeks. No one takes you seriously at first, until all of a sudden they do. The girl in the dirty clothes is now a woman in uniform, apparently she has in her a fire that no one had picked up on, and you vaguely wonder if she's of mixed heritage.

You know better than to ask.

You have five cities under your contract, or rather she does, when it all goes wrong in Ni Xiao. You know better than to let her go in that building alone, but you relent when she insists, and you're pretty sure that the filthy child you once looked down upon with scorn in your eyes never came out. She'll never tell you what happened in there, you're not entirely sure you want to know. But she's different, after. You're not even sure it's a bad different until much, much later.

Had you gone after her she'd have been killed in cold blood by some big brute of a bandit and, whilst she won't thank you when you appeal from a distance to the guy's respect for men over women in order to save her, she'll hold your hand for an extra ten seconds that night before excusing herself to go to bed.

…

The back of your throat is dry, or perhaps it's just that the rest of you is wet. Or is that sweat? Does it even matter? No, you think, it doesn't matter. Because the girl with the dirty clothes is suddenly the woman with no clothes and she's on top of you and she's moving and you're not all that sure as to why you're even capable of rational thought right now, especially when she's doing _that_ with her hips, and then instead of contemplating how you're still coherent you lose that particularly long-winded train of thought and watch her as she shudders above you, her eyes closed and lips parted. Her tongue peeks out to wet them and you watch, fascinated.

She makes the sweetest noise after one particularly sublime roll of her hips, and you move your hands to cup her face. When she's finished she smiles, far too demurely considering what the two of you have just done, and begins to ride you again, not stopping until you too understand why touching each other in public is no longer something that can happen.

Had you been a little less careful you'd have held your daughter in your arms eight and a half months later.

...

You look into her eyes and they're every shade of green all at once. They're the grass that grows on the hills surrounding your childhood home, the bottles of perfume on your mother's bathroom shelf. They're the base of your kingdom's empire's flag and the shine in the emerald you had wanted to add to her engagement ring before you'd deemed the idea trite. They're the uniform you wear, the leaves in your tea.

They are home.

They are here.

They are _angry._

"I didn't really think Suyin had it in her." she's saying, and this time there is no stutter, no alluding to the fact that your fiancée had once thought of your mother as a surrogate one of her own. You find that it hurts in a way nothing else has done before but before you can start to dissect that feeling she's talking again, and anything the girl in the dirty clothes has to say is far more important than anything your brain could muster. "I knew there was a possibility, but I _never…_ How, why? How _could_ she, Baatar?"

And she was in your arms only seconds after you heard her voice crack but apparently even those seconds were far too long a time for her to wait for your comfort because she's gone stiff, as rigid as her no PDA rules, and you pull back. You keep your hands on her shoulders, though, and you will your eyes to let her know everything you don't know how to say.

Had you held her for a few seconds longer she'd have relaxed into your embrace, understood what it was you were trying to communicate. Instead, she spends the rest of her life wondering if you resent her for the knowledge that your mother has it in her to kill.

…

You sit and chew a mouthful of bread until it's more saliva than starch. You'd begged her. You'd pleaded. You'd promised. And now she's in a cell an entire destroyed city away, you wonder why she fired.

You shrug when your father asks you how you're holding up, not sure how to speak to the man whose shadow you'd done appalling things to escape but would now give almost anything to shrink back behind. He sits with you and he understands, because he's also the type to do anything for the woman he loves and it's not your fault - your father says - that the girl with the dirty clothes had asked you to destroy rather than create.

She hadn't, but you can hardly argue that now.

You instead make the point to him that you plan to atone for what you've done nonetheless and he smiles that way he used to when you'd offer suggestions for his projects. Your blood runs cold as you realise that you can't possibly make it up to him and that it's your own fault.

But, then, is it? You can make up for the physical damages you've caused, for the most part - no one's quite sure what to do about the Spirit Portal that's casting a gentle glow on an otherwise harsh reality - but you were never taught how to care for the heart and soul, were never allowed to explore that particular route. You wonder if your father regrets it and are suddenly overwhelmed with everything you want to say to him but never will for the plain and simple reason that both he and your mother could never understand.

You want to see her. You ask and they tell you no, and you're relieved. But at the same time you're angry because you're being treated like the child you've just spent the past three years proving you're not. It's childish to get angry, you remind yourself, and then you deflate, because after everything's been said and done nothing has changed at all.

You decide to wait. You'll see her again soon enough, you know, and maybe then you'll have figured out what it is that you want to say.

Had you demanded to see her again that night they'd have let you. You'd have broken when you saw her and caused a ruckus trying to get to her. Aunt Lin would have smacked you silly and you'd never have been permitted to enter the building again.

…

"Two years imprisonment followed by a mandatory five years of hard labour." The world is shocked she got off so lightly, but you? Not so much.

But you know she deserves so much more. Not punishment-wise, but in the way of credit for all the good she's inspired. The girl in the dirty clothes has always deserved more and you're absolutely certain you believe that because it's true and not because of some misguided loyalty you still feel towards her.

You love her. There is no doubt about that in your mind but somehow you can't see a future there. It's not that you hate her for firing your own weapon on you, not at all. Because you understand that the empire had to come first, the kingdom had to come first, the promise had to come first.

The _family_ had to come first.

And as you watch her walk down the corridor outside the courtroom, blinking at the photographers outside and their far too bright flashbulb cameras, you begin to ponder the hypotheticals and the what ifs. All the things you could have done but didn't do and where you might be now had you just done a few things differently...

And suddenly you feel small again, standing in front of your father with his hand on your shoulder, because there was once a time in which you didn't know who she was and now there's not a single person in this world that does not know her name.

* * *

 **I wish we'd seen more of Baatar Jr in the show, purely for the reason that I'd love to know whether my assumption that he saw himself as far more neglected/ignored than he really was is correct. Also I wonder if the comics will address Kuvira's trial at all, it would be nice to see whether or not he's as loyal/forgiving as I've assumed him to be. As it stands they both could go either way.**

 **In any case, thank you for reading and - if you've the time - I'd adore some feedback. I've the beginning of a multi-chap Baavira family fic on AO3 that I plan to also upload here if it'll be well-received.**


End file.
